Substantial leadership changes are ahead for many NFL teams with the departure of 10 head coaches in the final days of the 2025-2026 season. Perhaps most significant in the spate of turnovers are the departures of Baltimore Ravens Head Coach John Harbaugh and Pittsburgh Steelers Head Coach Mike Tomlin, who ran their organizations for 18 and 19 seasons, respectively. The pair were the longest tenured active coaches in the league, where most successful head coaches last 7 to 10 years. Buffalo Bills Head Coach Sean McDermott was fired after nine seasons despite leading his team to five consecutive AFC East titles.
While the NFL has its own unique culture and dynamics, leaders are expected to set goals, manage resources, and drive performance as they would in any organization. According to Peetz Family Professor of Leadership Christopher Myers, leadership changes are easier to determine after obvious failures, but harder to make following the long-term organizational success that Harbaugh, Tomlin, and McDermott shared.
“Absent a major scandal or something like that, you often expect to see a kind of slow, well-planned transition process. In this case, I think what the teams are hoping for is a change in a positive direction and improvement in the outcomes that they're getting,” said Myers, who studies organizations and management, and is the founding Faculty Director of the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School’s Center for Innovative Leadership. “I think the longer the leader has been there, the bigger the change it's going to be. Are they going to be able to find a leader who can pick up on the things that were working and drop the things that weren't working, or are they going to find a new leader who does things very differently? If so, you may lose the things that aren’t working, but you also might lose a number of the things that are working.
Myers explains that abrupt changes after a long tenure can be difficult for any organization. “It's going to be really hard for somebody to come in and do things hugely different than what was done before, because you have a lot of institutional inertia. I don’t think people realize how much a team has organically grown and evolved over time to suit that one person. Eighteen years is an incredibly long tenure in the NFL,” Myers said.
Professor of Practice Christina DePasquale notes the business of sports is about winning as much as it is about money. “Ultimately, you want to win because that's what you think is profit-maximizing. The players, head coaches, and general managers want to win because that means job stability for them,” she said.
DePasquale says she’s not surprised to see the recent departures among coaches with long-time winning records that failed to win championships. “It's weird to think that some of the best teams maybe are the best because they have the most stability among their coaches. I think both the Ravens and the Steelers, and maybe the Bills, concluded that it was unlikely they would win a Super Bowl, so a change was needed,” she said. DePasquale also notes both the Ravens and Bills have successful quarterbacks who are essential on-field leaders, so a change in leadership at the top may mean less turmoil for the organization as a whole.
DePasquale also notes that some NFL coaching changes may be part of an industry cycle. “Having a good coach available on the market seems to make some teams more likely to fire their coach. However, it also can have the opposite effect,” she said. DePasquale says many colleges fired their coach when Lane Kiffin appeared open to pursuing other positions. However, once top positions at Louisiana State University, University of Florida, and Auburn opened, other teams decided against firing underperforming coaches because they were likely to only get candidates they didn't really want.
Even with the recent turnover, DePasquale says NFL head coaching positions are generally more stable than similar roles in other professional leagues. The average term for a Major League Baseball manager is about four years, while the average National Hockey League head coach lasts only two years.
“The NHL makes the NFL look like people stay there for decades,” DePasquale adds.